guineas a second for the glorious thirty
minutes of racing that show steam and steel over fence and fallow in a
clipping rush, without a check from find to finish? So be it ever! The
riding that graces the Shires, that makes Tedworth and Pytchley, the
Duke's and the Fitzwilliam's, household words and "names beloved"--that
fills Melton and Market Harborough, and makes the best flirts of the
ballroom gallop fifteen miles to covert, careless of hail or rain, mire
or slush, mist or cold, so long as it is a fine scenting wind--is
the same riding that sent the Six Hundred down in to the blaze of the
Muscovite guns; that in our fathers' days gave to Grant's Hussars their
swoop, like eagles, on to the rearguard at Morales, and that, in the
grand old East and the rich trackless West, makes exiled campaigners
with high English names seek and win an aristeia of their own at the
head of their wild Irregular Horse, who would charge hell itself at
their bidding.

Now in all the service there was not a man who loved hunting better than
Bertie. Though he was incorrigibly lazy, and inconceivably effeminate in
every one of his habits; though he suggested a portable lounging-chair
as an improvement at battues, so that you might shoot sitting; drove to
every breakfast and garden party in the season in his brougham with the
blinds down lest a grain of dust should touch him; thought a waltz too
exhaustive, and a saunter down Pall Mall too tiring, and asked to
have the end of a novel told him in the clubs, because it was too much
trouble to read on a warm day; though he was more indolent than any
spoiled Creole--"Beauty" never failed to head the first flight, and
adored a hard day cross country, with an east wind in his eyes and the
sleet in his teeth. The only trouble was to make him get up in time for
it.

"Mr. Cecil, sir; if you please, the drag will be round in ten minutes,"
said Rake, with a dash of desperation for the seventh time into his
chamber, one fine scenting morning.

"I don't please," answered Cecil sleepily, finishing his cup of coffee,
and reading a novel of La Demirep's.

"The other gentlemen are all down, sir, and you will be too late."

"Not a bit. They must wait for me," yawned Bertie.

Crash came the Seraph's thunder on the panels of the door, and a strong
volume of Turkish through the keyhole: "Beauty, Beauty, are you dead?"

"Now, what an inconsequent question!" expostulated Cecil, with appealing
rebuke. "If a